Tuesday, March 26, 2013

George Vance the Vicequicentenarian

While compiling his book in 1860 on the Irish Vances,
William Balbirnie interviewed several members of the family of John Vance (a Dublin politician and Member of Parliament at that time) who all said that the first Vance in their family who came to
Ireland

…was named George, that in 1662 he
fled from Wigtonshire [in Cumberland in northern England near the border with
Scotland] to the North of Ireland, in consequence of having married his cousin
Grace, a rich heiress, and settled near Dungannon in County Tyrone…Further, that
this George was born in Scotland about 1637…and died about 1757, aged about 120
years [Balbirnie, p. 57].

Balbirnie dismisses the whole story partly because he
couldn’t quite believe someone would live to be 120:

The great age to which it is stated
that this refugee lived…seems an incredible statement. ..after the most
diligent enquiry…we have not been able to receive any confirmation of this
astounding statement…We do think this story is incredible [Balbirnie, p. 58].

It’s a shame Balbirnie didn’t have Internet. It turns out that George Vance’s advanced age
actually WAS remembered starting all the way back in 1758 when the Scots Magazine in that year even gave a little extra personal health information in
his obituary under Deaths:

Another publication from 1758, the Gentlemen’s Monthly Intelligencer, also gave an obituary for George. Then in 1799 he was included in a book about supercentenarians
(those over 100 years old) called Human Longevity.In 1820, he was one of Kirby Magazine’s
Remarkable Characters.John O’Hart also
mentions George Vance in his famous 1881 book Irish Pedigrees – and O’Hart even mentions his new set of teeth (except he says at the age of 90)!
George has even made it in modern times
into Wikipedia on a list of reported supercentenarians. In
fact, although he’s not much remembered in genealogy circles, the George Vance who
died in 1758 in Tyrone, Ireland has had some of
the longest-running media coverage of any Vance in history.

Was George really a vicequicentenarian (literally, “20 and
100 years old”)?Who knows?But it does seem incredible if he lived almost
three and a half times as long as the average human lifespan at that time.John O’Hart claims to have found George’s
baptism record from 1640, which would certainly support the story if it were
the same George Vance.

George Vance’s real age (and the health of his teeth) may
never be known for sure.But his story
also raises a very possible second immigrant ancestor to Ireland for the Vances. John O’Hart says George’s father was named Joseph Vans, probably born around
1590 and from either Cumberland or Scotland, and he also documents some of
George’s descendants in Ireland and England up to about 1877, several of whom
became prominent Vances in Dublin or London.The origin of this Vance family could certainly be from another de
Vaux/Vans family line, since both the English Vaux and the Scottish Vans
families lived in areas close to Wigton for centuries.Or they could be from a completely different
origin of the Vance surname.

No modern Vances have connected their family trees to George
yet, but it is certainly a possible ancestry for any of the Irish Vance DNA
groups.It would be interesting if we
could find a male descendant of George’s to test and see what DNA Group he was
from.Or maybe we should just check if any
of our older relatives have noticed any new teeth…